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A Park, an Oyster Farm and Science

By Felicity Barringer March 24, 2011 8:30 amMarch 24, 2011 8:30 am

Heidi Schumann for The New York TimesThe Drakes Bay Oyster Company operation in a corner of Point Reyes National Seashore.

The question at the core of the seven-year-old feud in California’s Marin County is whether an oyster farm at Point Reyes National Seashore should be allowed to continue operations after 2012. The controversy, centering on the management of an area designated as potential wilderness, remains unresolved. Both sides are putting forth their best arguments for a continuing environmental impact review.

Challenges arose to the National Park Service science that will inform that review. Was the scientific analysis of the oyster farm’s environmental impact marred by sloppiness, selective bias and a failure to grapple with extensive evidence showing little impact from oyster boats? If it was, how big a deal was it?

A report released late Tuesday by the Interior Department solicitor’s office answered “yes” to the first question, and to the second, “Not a very big deal.” A lawyer for that office, Gavin Frost, concluded that the park service did “mishandle” things, but not intentionally.

His analysis was based on the premise that a willful intent to deceive is a prerequisite to a finding of scientific misconduct. The bottom line was: no intent, no scientific misconduct. But mistakes were made, he said

But there was so much more to the report.

The 35 pages offer a fascinating look at science being conducted and evidence being ignored in a charged political environment. It lays out how a scientist arranged to have nearly 300,000 photographic images taken once a minute by stationary cameras positioned to capture the comings and goings of oyster boats and harbor seals during pupping season — and then neglected to thoroughly examine, analyze, use or publicize the results.

In the report, the worldviews of two dominant antagonists — neither named, but each easily identifiable by the descriptions of their well-publicized earlier activities — come alive through the dry, lawyerly prose.

One is Corey Goodman, a scientist and businessman who was first invited to review park science relating to the oyster farm four years ago. He found it lacking, and since then has become Marin County’s Inspector Javert, relentlessly hunting evidence of scientific misconduct and urging government officials, from the top of the Interior Department to Senator Dianne Feinstein to the office of the White House science adviser, to crack down. His complaints are referred to in the report as “rancorous submissions,” and as cited by Mr. Frost, his calls of “false science” seem at times to be almost reflexive. He comes across as the avenging angel of the pro-oyster-farm faction.

The other protagonists are the park scientists, particularly Sarah Allen, who for four years has been at the forefront of the park’s research and writings examining how Drakes Bay Oyster Farm may put the natural ecosystems in Drakes Estero at risk. Several of her earlier statements, about the harm to life on the seabed from oyster feces and harm to eelgrass, have been withdrawn under pressure from Dr. Goodman. At the top of her scientific agenda now is research on the farm’s potential harm to harbor seals. She is held in high esteem by many in the pro-wilderness camp.

Mr. Frost is sympathetic to her explanations of the actions that are under scrutiny, but the sum total of his observations is hardly flattering. He portrays her as holding fast to the notion that oyster boats have a negative impact on the seals, despite contradictory evidence.

He referred at one point to her “subjective belief” that the oyster farm’s operations “either disturb harbor seals” or dissuade them from returning to their accustomed sandbars. “Disinclined to test the reasonableness of that belief,” the report continued, she “did not carefully and thoroughly analyze the new scientific material” — that is, the photographic record which she herself initiated.

As Mr. Frost’s report noted, discussions with park scientists “reveal a collective but troubling mindset” that Dr. Allen “enjoyed the unrestricted freedom to research harbor seals at upper Drakes Estero in any manner she deemed fit, without the corresponding need to share any data generated, so long as the research was not closely evaluated” and was considered inferior.

The photographs were not shared with scientists and others investigating the impacts of the oyster farm on the area.

Mr. Frost, noting elsewhere that individual photographs were readily produced by the scientists as evidence in ancillary disputes, wrote that “as a direct consequence” of Dr. Allen’s “failure to process data completely and speedily, potentially powerful evidence remains unknown.”

“This misconduct arose from incomplete and biased evaluation and from blurring the line between exploration and advocacy through research,” he wrote.

“Someone in the chain of command should have recognized the errors, sounded the alarm and demanded disclosure of all research” data that contradicted park claims about seal disturbances, he says elsewhere.

Mr. Frost sits in judgment of both of the leading characters in his initial summary statement: “Thorough analysis of the facts confirms” that park employees “erred, but not to the degree set forth” by Mr. Goodman, it says. The mistakes arose from the failure of some park employees “to modify their intuitive, but statistically and scientifically unproven belief” that the oyster operations disturb seals, he wrote.

The report is the fourth in three years to touch on the quality of science at the park.

Addendum: some from the pro-wilderness camp, like Neal Desai of the National Parks Conservation Association, see the controversy over the photographs as a “scientific misconduct straw man.” An environmental impact review of the current oyster farming operation deals directly with the concerns about commercial operations in an area slated for wilderness designation.

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